KASHMIR AND THE HIMALAYAS 109

of their adoption. In Kashmir alone are there signs of
possible colonisation. Already on the banks of the Dal
Lake there is springing up a small English town with
English houses and gardens which bears signs of permanency.

The greater portion of the cultivable area of the
Kashmir state is concentrated in the valley of the
jehlam, where the river winds with sluggish current and
tortuous windings to the Wulur Lake, and passes thence
by the narrow outlet at Sopur to a rapid and broken
descent to the plains of India. Thus the valley offers to
the geologist an important Himalayan example of the
formation of a wide and highly fertile plain by the local
elevation of a stream bed above a narrowing outlet, which
has led to a vast deposit of alluvium and to the flattening
of the river gradient. Within the limits of this plain are
gathered the chief centres of local industry, together with
nnumerable villages of the Kashmir peasantry, whose lives,
passed amid scenes of surpassing natural beauty, have been
chequered and degraded in the past by oppression and
misrule, and their numbers thinned by pestilence, famine,
and earthquake. Under the rule of the present Maharaja,
Sir Pratab Sing, many useful reforms have been inaugurated,
 including a land assessment and the formation
of a permanent residence for a British political officer at
Srinagar. The political influence which centres at Srinagar
reaches to Kashgar, to Leh (the capital of Ladak), to
Gilgit and to Chitral. With the establishment of the
Residency, there has been a great increase of English
visitors and of new settlements. Gulmarg, in one of the
glades on the northern slopes of the Pir Panjil, is already
a popular resort, although the erection of permanent
buildings has not yet been sanctioned by the state. The
'mprovement in communications and the introduction of
:elegraphs have developed the internal traffic of the country,
and conduced to a general increase in trade and in land
cevenue. The change in the condition of the people,
who were in 1887 in a position of absolute serfdom withaut
 rights or power to represent their grievances, is perhaps